


Eisoptrophobia

by sky_reid



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Charles Being Concerned, Emotionally Crippled Erik Is Fun To Read, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mirrors, Past Abuse, Rape/Non-con References, Scars, Sexual Violence, Violence, there's a lot of violence okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:59:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sky_reid/pseuds/sky_reid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are scars on his body that Erik doesn't like to see. Charles is determined to make him realize that they are just another part of who he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eisoptrophobia

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what the fuck came over me to write this xD I am thoroughly amused by the fact that I have a scene that _starts_ with Erik and Charles naked and I couldn't for the life of me (not that I would, but even if I tried, I wouldn't be able to) turn into anything even remotely sexual. Yes, that's me. Angst over sex. Wow. I suck xD  That... may not be the most fortunate choice of words xD
> 
> Rated M for nudity, mature themes and depictions of violence (all violence happened in the past, though).
> 
> Lyrics (which inspired this) are from Rise Against's _Broken Mirrors_.
> 
> Just in case there's any doubt, eisoptrophobia is fear of mirrors or seeing oneself in a mirror.

 

_Eisoptrophobia_

 

_We hide from the mirrors –_

_they might show our scars._

 

“Open your eyes,” Charles whispers. Erik reluctantly obeys, but adamantly stares at the clock above the door. Charles hums quietly and nuzzles behind his ear. “Look,” he says, his tone gentle and soft, but the command is unyielding. Erik takes a deep breath, counts to ten. Then he counts again. Charles doesn't say anything, just tightens his grip on Erik's naked hips, strokes his thumbs gently over Erik's skin. Eventually, Erik tears his eyes away from the ticking clock and looks at the mirror in front of him. He shivers all over and squeezes his eyes shut again after mere seconds, tries to break free of Charles' grasp, but Charles is stronger than he looks and holds him in place with no more than a hum and a swift replacement of one of his hands from Erik's hip to his shoulder. Erik gives in fairly quickly, lets Charles guide him back to stand in front of the large baroque mirror. He doesn't open his eyes. Charles doesn't repeat his request, just stands behind him, his fingers flexing on Erik's skin, his body the only heat source in the dusty attic.

 

It's seven minutes before Erik takes another deep breath and opens his eyes (he knows, because he's been focused on following the thin aluminium arms of the clock on the wall to distract himself from what Charles wants him to do). He keeps his eyes trained on the ornamental copper frame of the mirror, his reflection only a blurry image on the periphery of his eyesight.

 

Charles kisses his shoulder and leaves his lips there. “What do you see?” he asks against Erik's rough skin.

 

“Scars,” Erik answers without even a moment's pause, not looking at the mirror; he doesn't need to see himself to know what he looks like. Charles sighs, breath curling around Erik's ear, and snakes his arms around Erik's waist, his fingers tickling over the sensitive skin of Erik's stomach. There's a strange feeling of a presence in Erik's mind that he has come to accept as Charles' way of asking permission to use his gift; uncertainly, Erik grants it with a small nod. Charles' thoughts slowly fill his mind, the usually pleasant buzz of his brilliant mind now tinted with worry and anxiousness which oddly calms Erik, assuring him that he's not the only one nervous about this.

 

 _Look_ , Charles' thought clears up and lifts from the hum of the rest of the inane chatter in Erik's head. Erik takes another deep breath, closes his eyes and follows the thinnest clock arm as it counts exactly one minute. Then he looks again. He locks eyes with Charles in the mirror.  _Look at yourself_ , Charles corrects with a hint of an amused smile.

 

Erik counts another 60 seconds. And another 60 and another 120. Charles doesn't move a muscle, standing behind him, holding him in place with gentle but firm hands, absently rubbing his cheek on the side of Erik's neck. Erik finally opens his eyes and takes in his reflection in the body-length mirror in front of them. His eyes zero in on white and red marks of varying sizes all over his skin. The only one he can stand to look at for more than a few fleeting moments is the faint white shape on his right knee – he remembers learning how to ride his father's bicycle and falling, how his mother wiped away the blood and cleaned the scraping with alcohol, how she kissed his forehead and told him he'd be all right. Charles must be revisiting that day with him as well, because he runs a calming hand over Erik's side and comes up on his toes to kiss his cheek. Erik can't help but lean into the touch to feel every inch of Charles' tender skin and wiry muscle pressed against him, Charles' solid perseverance the only thing still keeping him in the room. Charles exhales a mint-fresh breath into his hair as he plants his feet flat on the wooden floorboards again and rests his chin on Erik's shoulder. For a while, they just stand there, Charles' hands splayed possessively low on Erik's abdomen, Erik's breathing even and consciously controlled. His eyes never stray from his own knees as he braces himself for what he knows Charles will ask of him next.

 

“Tell me,” Charles whispers, turning his head and kissing Erik's neck; Erik doesn't have to look to know that there's a beginning of a scar where Charles' lips are pressed, but his eyes snap up anyway just in time to see Charles' tongue dart out to caress the thin white line.

 

“I—“ Erik starts, his voice raw and breaking, the words he doesn't know how to say tasting like fire in his throat.

 

 _Show me_ , Charles' voice clarifies in his mind before he can add anything and Erik is so startled by the request, the seriousness and honesty behind it which he can feel in Charles' thoughts, that he can't stop the memories flooding his mind.

 

Erik knows all his scars, could describe them with eyes closed, find them with his fingers without looking; he  _remembers_ how he got each and every one of them. As Charles' lips are pressed to the very tip of the offensive line, Erik can  _feel_ the sting of the whip coming down on his back again, as if he's twelve still, can smell the sweat of the guard standing behind him as he swings his arm back to bring another lash down on Erik's back, can hear Doktor's chuckle from the corner of the room, see the dirty tiles on the wall he's tied to—

 

Charles' gasp brings him out of his vision, and he's not a kid anymore, Shaw is not here, nobody is whipping him for not having moved the metal bed frame far enough; Charles' blunt nails are digging into his skin, horror and disgust as evident on his face as they are in his thoughts in Erik's head.

 

But it's too late to stop the tumble of Erik's reminiscence as his eyes land on the white swell of a circle on his left shoulder, no more than an inch from where Charles' head is laid; the bullet hit him unexpectedly that night in Vienna, while he was still on Shaw's hot trail, while he still wasn't used to multitasking, juggling reading and memorizing secret police files, cleaning up after himself and feeling out for the metal surrounding him. It hurt like a bitch once his overly busy brain registered what had happened through the addling haze of shock and panic. He killed the shooter with an efficient flick of his wrist which send the bullet flying from his shoulder back in the direction it came from, stole what he needed and ran away. He cleaned the wound with scotch and bandaged it with an old shirt in the small bathroom of the midnight train for Venice.

 

There's a long patch of reddened overly sensitive thin skin on the inside of his left arm where Shaw used to punish him for disobeying by skinning him with a razor. It wasn't so much pain as it was a very unpleasant burn that kept him from properly relaxing his arm for days on end; Erik thought it was the worst feeling ever before he managed to stop the razor one day, some weeks into his training, and then Shaw switched to bigger and sharper, to knives and guns and fire and energy, and Erik ended up almost missing the benign burn of the unhealed scrape being opened with a razor again.

 

Right underneath the red mark, there's an elevated patch of red skin where Shaw tested a new piece of equipment for his lab on Erik's muscles. Erik can still vividly recall as the little spiral-shaped pipe drilled into him, how his whole arm hurt afterwards, how he could barely move his fingers and how much time, effort and endless pain it took to repair the damage Shaw had done to his tendons.

 

It's been years since a needle found its way into his vein, but the abused point of skin in the crook of his elbow is still clear enough to be unmistakable. The first time Shaw shot something into his bloodstream, the liquid was see-through and lime green and it burned through his body making him shake and scream and fall to the floor; he woke up with a start in a clean white room with other prisoners who had fallen ill. Shaw wasn't pleased with his reaction and he kept giving Erik what he called _an experimental serum to make you stronger_. It didn't. But after the twelfth injection, at least Erik could stand the pain without fainting.

 

The digits on his forearm were not so much painful as they were humiliating, a shameful reminder of what the world thought of him at the time, of what some people still think of him. He's not afraid of people seeing the Nazi tattoo, he doesn't actively try to hide it; it's not his shame that it shows, it's the proof of the wrongness of what he's been through, of the ideology of the War. Back then, however, he was just a child, he hardly understood. All he knew was that they were marking him, _branding_ him as a lesser being, like an animal. He feels his hands curling into fists at the anger that he still feels when he thinks about it.

 

The left side of his chest is littered with tiny specks of raised pale skin, seemingly with no pattern, sometimes close together and sometimes far apart. Erik knows exactly how many there are (27) and can remember how and when he got each of them. He hated it when Shaw would blow smoke into his face, coughed at the smell of burning tobacco, but he hated it more when Shaw would put out the finished cigarette on his skin, filling the air around them briefly with the smell of burning flesh that Erik could barely sense over the pain.

 

His stomach is covered with an intricate design of surgical scars, some thin and white, some raised and with clearly botched stitching still obvious around them, from not one, but four procedures he had to endure as a young teenager – two of them necessary after the beatings he took from Shaw and his underlings, and two that still give him some of his worst nightmares from when Shaw wanted to see how much pain he could endure and still be able to control his powers and how his inner organs worked while he was under stress of trying to lift metal objects too heavy even for when he could fully concentrate on them.

 

There are other scars on him, each with its own story all too well-known to Erik (the healed knife wound just under his ribs on his right side from that one night he tried to escape; the poorly treated patch on his right upper arm from when he was trying to tear down a whole building at only 15 and he felt the bone break but couldn't stop because Shaw was looking at him threateningly and Erik knew that he would be punished for failure, so he kept pushing even as his favoured arm gave out and the strain of trying to lift it made the bone pop out of place and puncture the skin; the hand-shaped, rough-skinned burn marks from Shaw's palms emitting raw energy into him as he held Erik's hips tightly, kept Erik naked and splayed out on the bed for days, using him whenever he felt like it; the long scar hidden in the crease of his thigh from when he refused to spread his legs when Shaw first asked, from when Shaw pushed his knees apart forcefully and cut him with a knife as punishment and used only his blood to ease the way when he first took Erik), but the memories stop coming when his eyes fall on Charles' shaking hands, his fingers still possessively splayed over Erik's abdomen. He comes back to here and now, feels the distress coming from _Charles'_ thoughts in his head, the wetness on his shoulder from _Charles'_ tears, the shivering of _Charles'_ body. That Charles has such a strong reaction to _his_ pain stuns Erik and shifts the focus of his mind from the past to the feeling of Charles holding him. Erik knows that his head is not a pretty place to be in most times, but this little trip down memory lane must have been pure torture for Charles who doesn't only see the moving images, but feels what Erik felt, shares what Erik associates with those recollections.

 

Erik holds unnaturally still, uncurling his fingers and relaxing his shoulders with effort. He waits for Charles to step away, to tell him that he's no longer wanted, that he's damaged goods, not enough for someone as unblemished as Charles is, but there's a vehement _No, never, Erik, I would_ never _say something like that_ in his head and Charles' arms tighten around his middle as Charles wipes his face on Erik's neck and kisses his shoulder tenderly and affectionately, his fingers no longer shaking, but moving slowly over his skin, soothing him. Erik lets himself relax into Charles and close his eyes, hiding in the darkness from his own reflection still staring at him from the mirror.

 

 _Open your eyes, Erik_ , Charles whispers into his mind,  _Look at yourself._ Erik doesn't want to look. He knows what will greet him when he opens his eyes, and he's had enough of seeing his own scarred and ruined self for one day. “Erik,” Charles murmurs against his skin, running his hands up over Erik's stomach and chest, tracing over every scar and imperfection, fingers dancing over every line and spot that Erik can feel like an itch every minute of every hour of every day, not letting him forget, not letting him  _let go_ . “My beautiful perfect wonderful Erik,” Charles mutters and Erik wants to laugh because it's cliché and girly, but something in Charles' voice stops him, the way he says it with wonder and love and  _honesty_ .

 

“Why are we doing this?” Erik asks quietly, not opening his eyes as he follows Charles' fingertips outlining the traces of Shaw's hands on him.

 

“Because I want you to _see_ ,” Charles replies, “I want you to see yourself the way you really are. The way _I_ see you.”

 

Erik's eyes open of their own accord (or probably Charles'), but when he looks at the mirror, what's staring back at him is not a torn shell of a man from mere minutes ago, it's a strong, proud man, someone who's been through so much and still stayed upright, someone to be admired and respected; he knows that Charles is projecting his own views.

 

“Can you... _make_ me forget?” Erik asks uncertainly, not entirely sure if he would want to, but willing to try if it will get him out of doing this again and again until he accepts that he's destroyed the way Charles wants him to.

 

“I _could_ ,” Charles admits. “But it wouldn't help you.” Erik arches an eyebrow. He hardly thinks this kind of torture is helping him either. “Erik...” Charles chides, kissing his ear. _It's not your_ physical _scars I want you to accept._

 

Anger flares in Erik at that, the reality of Charles knowing him so well, the gravity of what Charles wants him to do. Erik has lived with who he is for years, avoiding this very confrontation with his fears and insecurities – that he's _too_ damaged, that Shaw will forever be the closest he's ever had to someone loving him, that his scars, that his personality will repulse anyone who dares get close enough to even so much as glimpse them. He's never once _wanted_ to think about why he hated mirrors, leaving all those feelings buried deep beneath layers upon layers of anger and hatred because it's _easier_ that way. And now Charles wants him to do something he hasn't managed to gather enough courage for in _years_ and it makes him angry that Charles would presume to ask for this, that Charles would believe Erik could do it.

 

The metal around them starts vibrating, the frame of the mirror melting and reaching out in tentacles towards Charles. Charles doesn't even flinch as he moves to stand in front of Erik, his hands never leaving Erik's shoulders.

 

“Go ahead,” he says, voice steady and unwavering. “Do it. Hurt me if it will make you feel better.”

 

Erik winces at the words and immediately releases all the metal he's holding. “I would _never_ ,” he hisses.

 

“I know,” Charles replies, still completely undisturbed by Erik's little display. If anything, he seems pleased, like he just succeeded in something spectacularly difficult. Erik figures he kinda did, because for all that he is still nervous and scared, he's not angry and he can focus on Charles again, try to follow Charles' instructions, trust Charles to help him. He looks into Charles' eyes and Charles gives him a small smile. “Look at me,” he says. Erik's eyebrows draw closer to each other in confusion before his eyes move to the mirror in front of them without his decision.

 

Charles' naked form is shielding him from the mirror, and all that Erik can see of himself is his face, partially obscured by the top of Charles' head. Charles' soft hair falls in waves over his head down to his neck, longer now than it was when they first met, the perfect length for Erik to run his fingers through, to tug on when he wants. His long neck bears a small purpling bruise that Erik distinctly remembers making. His shoulders are covered in light freckles, a few beauty marks are scattered over his otherwise pale back. Erik can't help reaching out for him, placing one hand on Charles' hip and running the other down his spine, settling it in the dip just above the swell of his ass. For all that Charles can be a real pain, what with his arrogance and near-childish belief in good, there's nothing on Charles that he would change, nothing that is not already perfect.

 

Charles stand on his toes and kisses Erik's lips with a smile. “Do you see them?” he asks. Erik frowns at the non sequitur, looking at Charles' face once again. Charles' arms wrap around his neck as Charles instructs Erik's arm to move lower. Erik raises an eyebrow at the unexpected turn of events, but Charles shakes his head. Erik's fingers brush over uneven skin where Charles' thighs meet his bottom and Erik looks more carefully at the mirror. He can just barely make out thin pale lines, barely there, but still visible. However, the truth is, Erik wouldn't have noticed them if Charles hadn't pointed them out.

 

Erik doesn't have time to say anything before a memory that is not his own hits him so hard it leaves him wobbling. The image of a young teenager Charles, no more than fourteen, bent over a desk, held down with a wide, strong hand on his back, trousers and underwear pooled around his ankles, angry red marks of a switch criss-crossing on his pale skin, the sting and burn of every blow, far too many of them, each one far too harsh, the sound of the switch as it comes down through the air, the feeling of skin breaking and blood dripping down Charles' inner thighs; it all has Erik gasping for breath and clutching at Charles to stay on his feet. The memory dissipates around him and he slowly comes back to himself, face buried in the crook of Charles' neck, arms wrapped around Charles' waist, breathing hard, his heart beating madly. Charles strokes his hair.

 

“Do you see them?” he repeats, calm and composed, like it was a perfectly ordinary day he'd just shown Erik. Erik shudders to think that maybe it was a perfectly ordinary thing for Charles. _Not as perfect as you think_ , Charles says into his mind with a faint smile on his lips that Erik can feel against his temple, like it's okay, like it's fine to be imperfect and damaged and broken.

 

But it is, on Charles. Even now when they've been pointed out, Charles' scars are not what Erik's eyes are drawn to. Erik can see them, is now aware of them, but he somehow ends up counting Charles' freckles, staring at the line of his spine, itching to touch his lower back. Yes, the scars are there, but they are hardly the most important thing about Charles.

 

Charles kisses Erik's lips, his nose, his chin, his neck, before stepping away and releasing his neck somewhat reluctantly. One of his hands snakes down Erik's left arm and Charles tangles their fingers together as he steps to the side. “Do you see them?” he asks, his free hand running over one of the scars on Erik's stomach before it, too, retreats.

 

Erik still sees his scars. But at least they're not the only thing he sees anymore. He squeezes Charles' hand and smiles, staring at their reflection.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed it ^^


End file.
